Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: In and Out (04/30/09)
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TITLE: CLAMMING | Previous Challenge Entry
By Nancy Kaye
05/06/09 -
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I’m as happy as a clam. I’m drawn to the low tides, with my bright yellow shellfish license announcing my intent and the State of Washington’s permission. My foray zone is about a third of the way toward the water from the high tide debris. The seagulls, ever hungry and squawking, cormorants and seals hauled out on the exposed rock, accompany me. My equipment includes a small bucket, a digger thing from the garden, rubber gloves, boots and a small plastic stool. It’s the steamer clams, which I seek to be hors d’oeuvres or sometimes to go visiting as hospitality and gift from the sea.
Sitting on my low stool, I turn over the heavily barnacled rocks. If there are tiny fiddler crabs running, and worms slinking, then I know it’s a likely place to also find the clams, which are usually at one to six inches deep. Finding some, I visually check out their size, one and a half inches across making them legal for my table. I work an area around where I’m sitting on my stool, then move several times and generally in a half-hour to forty-five minutes my limit is in the bucket. At the water’s edge I dump them out of the bucket and into the water to rinse the sand off. Then filling my bucket with new salt water, I put the clams back in and we’re ready for the short journey by car to home.
In my kitchen I sprinkle about a teaspoon of cornmeal across the top of the salt water. The clams take in the cornmeal by their siphon system and expel any internal sand. This makes tiny currents moving the cornmeal in swirls. Then they go in the refrigerator. Twenty-four hours later they are ready for steaming. I see their mantles and siphons exposed and have experienced their squirts, all signs of their life and function. It’s getting harder to put them in the pan, as I know I’m killing them. After sautéing garlic in butter I add white wine and thank them for giving their lives. Next, I plunge them into the pan, turn up the heat and cover with a glass top. In a few minutes I see their shells pop open and I take them out of the pan putting them in my beautiful pottery clamshell as they come to our table. I eat them and I’m as happy as a clam. Or am I?
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